Sarah Katherine Lewis - Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me

I told you from the start just how this would end
When I get what I want I never want it again Hole

I was out dancing last night with a pack of dear friends. A stranger approached our table preceded by the eye-watering aroma of gin and tobacco imperfectly filtered through skin. He finished his drink with a flourish and slammed his empty glass onto our table.

Youre pretty hot, baby he slurred, breathing hot juniper fumes into my face. Did those tattoos hurt?

My guess is youre pretty drunk, I said. My friend Jessica tittered.

He ignored my assessment, swaying in his shoes. Youre hot, he repeated. Im going to buy you a drink.

No, thank you, I said. I have one.

Im going to buy you another of the same-what is it?

Id prefer you didnt, but thank you just the same.

The menmy friendsat the table glanced at each other, unsure whether to intervene.

I maintained level eye contact with the stranger. See you later, I said.

In a flash the strangers smile turned sour. Youre a bitch, he said. Snatching his empty glass protectively, he stomped away from our table. Freaky bitch, he muttered.

My eyes met Jessicas for a moment. I shrugged. Could have been worse.

She nodded.

Both of us knew that could have gotten ugly. We were grateful it hadnt, and that our sweet male friends hadnt been forced to act in loco boyfriendis out of their own senses of honor. My cheeks felt hot, but I didnt think my flushed skin showed in the dim light of the club. At least, I hoped it didnt.

I slipped my jacket back on, covering my tattoos. Protective coloration, I thought, imagining myself melting into invisibility in the gloom of the club, a tiny leaf-colored salamander keeping very still on a branch.

After a few cocktails, though, I rallied. The DJ was playing our tables requests back to back, and it was no longer possible to remain seated with all that booty-shaking music wooing me out onto the dance floor. I shoved my jacket under our table and went out to dance with my friends, male and female.

Stomping and whirling, my back slick with sweat and my tattoos transformed into brilliant plumage under the flashing lights, I felt murderously sensual. As I got on top and took the music between my thighs it fucked me back hard, pounding into my cunt and my belly, and my desire for myself at my freest and wildest rose up and set everything on fire, turning the walls of the club to gold and crimson.

As I danced, I saw the man whod offered to buy me a drink and then insulted me. He was leaning into his beverage at a little table next to the bar, alone and gin-dazed. Hed taken my complicity in being his object of desire for granted, assuming that Id dressed to attract him and others. Sensing my gaze, he glanced at me briefly then turned his attention back to his drink. His squalid, man-size desire was no match for mine, and we both knew itwhat was a thousand times more important was what Iwanted and how effortlessly I could take that desire and more from the friction between my hips.

Out on the dance floor with my beautiful, fierce friends, with the music moving inside me like a slow fist, I was burning hota feral thing, tearing through skin to meat with sharp teeth, stripping flesh from bone.

I may be a freaky bitch, but Im a freaky bitch who can bust a serious move on the dance floor. And some nights thats all a freaky bitch needs.

THIS BOOK IS about fucking and food. The intersection of both sets is desire.

But desire itself is rarely uncomplicated. Desire can make us feel powerful, exultant, and freebut yearning can also be dangerous. Sometimes when we inspire desire, were punished. And sometimes when we allow others to lavish their desire on us, we end up needing a long, hot shower.

The chapters Eating Out and Southbound are two sides of the same you-are-what-you-eat coin Risk finishes the set.

Earl Grey Tea is a love story. So is Britney.

Sploshing delineates the perils of using food as erotic outer-wear.

Moules is a DIY mash note to mollusks.

Dont be scared. Put this in your mouth, and swallow.

EATING OUT

A WARM TONGUE IN YOUR ASS IS LIKE BEING BABY-WIPED: an infantile exercise in gentle, soap-free cleaning, more about the idea of boundaryless porn star virtuosity than actual mind-blowing erotic sensationor so Ive found, anyway.

For a while there it seemed like all my male dates were pulling out oral-anal during our first sexual encounters, as if eating pussy proficiently suddenly wasnt enough to secure a return invitation to my boudoir. For three months, every man I took to bed chose to consider my hindquarters his own personal Old Country Buffet line, moving from carving station to (tossed) salad bar in predictable succession. It was as if they all subscribed to the same cheerfully salacious man-rag, a newsletter to which ladies were not privy: This week, gentlemenstun her with a hot, squirmy tongue In her back door!

And I was stunnedthe first time. Definitely the second time. But by the third time, and the fourth time, I began to wonder if they were all phoning each other and sharing helpful hints on a toll-free public information hotline about how to fuck me. And I really wanted to set the record straight with the man who was disseminating the idea that I wanted to impersonate a human salt lick in the bedroom. Because that man had his information wrongdead wrongbut he sure was a vociferous son of a bitch. You had to admire his British are coming! enthusiasm. Too bad he wasnt circulating better intelligence. Because whenever I got my asshole licked, thanks to the misguided anal-evangelism of my own personal Paul Revere, it was